Our dog is recovering rapidly from her surgery, although she looks like Frankenstein with her double-octave scar sewn up in black thread. In fact, she's doing considerably better this time compared to the last. I'm in much worse shape. My neck and shoulders throb constantly from the strain of shifting boxes, I had a frantically busy two days at work last week (I was called in to sub while someone was out of the office on vacation), and I'm still desperately trying to figure out a way to get two humans, two cats, and a big dog in a compact car across country. Still, we've got less than two weeks to go and I'm doing quite well with the packing. Also, miracle of miracles, I'm getting phone calls from travel agencies in the Bay Area ready to offer me a job sight unseen. Clearly, finding a job isn't going to be a problem.
I've had plenty of time to think about what I'll do after the initial settling in. I got caught once by not having any plans for my life, and it was devastating, so I don't want to find myself there again. I have some goals. A few are of long standing but some are quite recent. Number one, I want to switch from travel to graphic design, probably web design. Number two, I want to buy a house by 2000 and I want to buy it in the Palo Alto area. Number three, I want to write a non-fiction book or three. Number four, I want to improve my French so much that I could get hired to teach it at Berlitz.
Notice, if you will, how achievable these goals are. They involve hard work and discipline, something I find difficult, and concentrate on making money from my artistic talents, something I've shied away from most of my life, but they aren't nebulous and unrealistic. I can do this stuff. You can't possibly know what kind of breakthrough this represents for me; you'll just have to take my word for it that my desire to earn money for being artistic and talented is a stunning psychological change in attitude.
Of course, that's once I've figured out where to put 13,000 lbs of stuff in a two-bedroom condo. Groan...
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